In Naples, they showed the world how much fun a coronation could be, with films and fireworks and a little bit of Freddie Mercury. After sealing their Serie A title in Udine on Thursday, the Partenopei came home to a party so vast that the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona could never hope to contain it.
Their game against Fiorentina was sold out, and tens of thousands more fans gathered outside the gates, knowing that, even without a ticket, there was no place they’d rather be. Inside, a sea of blue gave way during a post-game light show to the red, white and green of the tricolore badge that Napoli will wear as champions next season.
There was no trophy presentation – that must wait for the final day – but players were called up, one by one, to be celebrated. There was a cameo, too, from the Oscar-winning director Paolo Sorrentino. He embraced the Napoli owner, Aurelio De Laurentiis, who was producing movies long before he made this title-winning team, and reflected that “Maradona showed us how”.
Victor Osimhen has led the way this season and he scored the penalty – having previously missed one – that sealed a 1-0 win. In doing so, he overtook George Weah as the most prolific African goalscorer in Serie A history. Fiorentina gave Napoli a guard of honour before kick-off, but subsequently did all they could to spoil the party. Unlike their opponents, they still need points to chase their targets this season.
Serie A’s title race is over but competition for European places is more ferocious than ever. Fiorentina finished the weekend eighth and their best hopes of qualifying for continental competition realistically now lie with either winning the Coppa Italia or the Europa Conference League, in which they have reached the final and semi-finals, respectively.
Above them, six clubs have been fighting to join Napoli in the top four. All were pitted against one another this weekend. Milan hosted Lazio on Saturday afternoon and their neighbours, Inter, played at Roma immediately afterwards. Atalanta then hosted Juventus in Sunday’s lunchtime kick-off.
The question for the Milan clubs was how they would handle the pressure of such crucial domestic fixtures just four days before they are due to face each other in the semi-finals of this season’s Champions League. The answer was: with ease. Both claimed deserved 2-0 victories, though the Rossoneri paid a heavy price, Rafael Leão exiting their game after just 10 minutes with a thigh injury.
“No worries I’ll be back soon,” said the Portuguese in a post on the social media platform the Residency, but it is hard to imagine how a muscle strain could be overcome in less than a week. Milan had little trouble beating Lazio without him, but that spoke more to the meekness of the visitors, who failed to muster a shot on target for the first time in almost three years.
Perhaps Maurizio Sarri was right all along when he argued, after the Biancocelesti exited the Europa Conference League last month, that they are not built for playing three games in a week. Exhaustion, plainly, is a factor. Ciro Immobile is a shadow of himself and even the magnificent Sergej Milinkovic-Savic has fallen short of his high standards in the final part of this campaign.
Mattia Zaccagni and Felipe Anderson have been the key figures more recently, but they cannot do it alone. This was Lazio’s third defeat in four league games and a top-four spot that looked nailed on two weeks ago suddenly seems precarious. Their advantage over fifth-placed Milan is down to just three points.
The Rossoneri would prefer to be higher with four games remaining and Leão’s injury is a major concern. But at least they reminded themselves that he is not their only offensive weapon. Olivier Giroud showed characteristic cool with his layoff for Ismaël Bennacer’s opener and Theo Hernández went coast-to-coast for the second goal just as he did against Atalanta last May.
Whether it will be enough to defeat Inter is another question. Roma – deprived by injury of Paulo Dybala, Gini Wijnaldum, Chris Smalling and Stephan El Shaarawy – offered more resistance than Lazio had but still were swept aside by opponents rounding into form at the right time.
Although Inter have absentees of their own, they are outweighed by the restoration of Romelu Lukaku and Marcelo Brozovic to something like their best selves. The Belgian scored Inter’s second at the Stadio Olimpico, side-footing home from the edge of the box after being played through by Lautaro Martínez. He has collected three goals and assists in as many games.
Inter’s coaching staff believe improved physical conditioning has made all the difference for Lukaku and Brozovic after injuries waylaid them during the first half of this campaign. “Before January we had them around for scarcely a month,” said Simone Inzaghi. “We know how important they are.”
Where Leão’s injury has left Milan short of options up front for Wednesday’s game, Inzaghi will face a dilemma between whether to pick Lukaku or Edin Dzeko, who started both legs of the quarter-final win over Benfica. He need not envy Milan having Hernández to support the attack, either. Inter’s left-back Federico Dimarco scored their opener against Roma – putting him level with his Rossonero counterpart on four goals.
Victory kept Inter fourth, while Juventus leapfrogged Lazio into second after they won by the same 2-0 scoreline at Atalanta. The 19-year-old English attacking talent, Samuel Iling-Junior, was star of the show, marking his first senior start by both creating and finishing the game’s opening goal.
After hustling to win possession and break up a potential Atalanta counter down Juventus’s left wing, Iling-Junior unbalanced a defender with a stepover and fed the ball outside to Adrien Rabiot before angling in toward the six-yard area. The ball came back to him via a deflection, and he sent a first-time finish in off the underside of the bar.
Much remains uncertain with Juventus, who await a fresh sporting trial with the Italian football federation’s appeals court after their 15-point penalty for false accounting, as well as the process of a separate case against them over allegations of misleading statements regarding player wage deferrals during the Covid pandemic.
On the pitch, however, Massimiliano Allegri deserves credit for keeping his team on track while blooding young players. Iling-Junior was the sixth Juventus player born after 2001 to be granted a first start this season, the highest number of any club in Serie A besides relegation-threatened Verona.
Saturday: Cremonese 2-0 Spezia, Milan 2-0 Lazio, Roma 0-2 Inter. Sun: Atalanta 0-2 Juventus, Lecce 0-1 Verona, Napoli 1-0 Fiorentina, Torino 1-1 Monza. Monday games: Empoli v Salernitana, Sassuolo v Bologna, Udinese v Sampdoria.
Credit was due also to Dusan Vlahovic for keeping his cool to score a fine second goal deep in injury time, after being targeted with racist abuse by fans calling him a “gypsy”. It has happened before in this stadium and others. The reaction of the Atalanta manager, Gian Piero Gasperini, seeking to characterise these as only regular “insults” rather than a targeted abuse of a player for his ethnic origins, was a dispiriting reminder of a mindset that only makes it harder to achieve change.
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Napoli | 34 | 47 | 83 |
| 2 | Juventus | 34 | 24 | 66 |
| 3 | Lazio | 34 | 26 | 64 |
| 4 | Inter Milan | 34 | 27 | 63 |
| 5 | AC Milan | 34 | 16 | 61 |
| 6 | Atalanta | 34 | 15 | 58 |
| 7 | Roma | 34 | 12 | 58 |
| 8 | Fiorentina | 34 | 5 | 46 |
| 9 | Monza | 34 | -3 | 46 |
| 10 | Torino | 34 | -3 | 46 |
| 11 | Bologna | 33 | -1 | 45 |
| 12 | Udinese | 33 | 2 | 43 |
| 13 | Sassuolo | 33 | -9 | 43 |
| 14 | Salernitana | 33 | -13 | 35 |
| 15 | Empoli | 33 | -14 | 35 |
| 16 | Lecce | 34 | -13 | 31 |
| 17 | Verona | 34 | -23 | 30 |
| 18 | Spezia | 34 | -28 | 27 |
| 19 | Cremonese | 34 | -28 | 24 |
| 20 | Sampdoria | 33 | -39 | 17 |
